On Rereading R. A. Fisher

Abstract

Fisher's contributions to statistics are surveyed. His background, skills, temperament, and style of thought and writing are sketched. His mathematical and methodological contributions are outlined. More attention is given to the technical concepts he introduced or emphasized, such as consistency, sufficiency, efficiency, information, and maximum likelihood. Still more attention is given to his conception and concepts of probability and inference, including likelihood, the fiducial argument, and hypothesis testing. Fisher is at once very near to and very far from modern statistical thought generally.